Today is the 2nd year of my Dad’s death. I thought it may be less painful than the first, but that wasn’t the case.
It’s almost as if this last ‘pandemic year’ stunted the grief process and I haven’t made much progress at all. You’d think that a ‘year of quarantine’ and with the world shut-down, that I would have made emotional strides in grief. Not so much. Time is fickle. If anything Covid, washing masks daily, fixating on hand sanitizer along with Netflix binging only delayed my heart from healing.
Grief is an emotional black hole. In this black hole, you don’t know what to do, what to feel, where to go, what to say to yourself or others. It’s a blank numbness. To me, this is more uncomfortable than pain. I pride myself in knowing my feelings. I’ve learned to be ‘comfortable’ with sadness, anger, I embrace love, I can identify happiness vs. joy. I know when I’m ‘traffic frustrated’, pissed off or really angry. I like that about myself. But this grief, oh it’s a new breed. A new animal of emotion. It’s everything and nothing. It’s inexplainable. Yet, it’s all knowing and ever-present. Maybe it truly is the “god’ of all emotions. It’s omnipotent, ubiquitous, and omniscient. It turns you inside out and leaves no corner of your soul hidden. The trite is truth: “you can run but you cannot hide.” Grief will hunt you down eventually.
You might as well let it capture you and throw you in its black abyss. There you will find yourself and grow in every way that’s necessary, and in the end, others will benefit from your pain.
Grief can make you weird. I knew I needed to write today and honor my father but I was trying to do everything but. I tried to distract myself with anything. I went to clean the litter box only to remember that I cleaned it yesterday. I have voice mail messages from my Dad for my birthday in August 2018, that I cannot delete but also couldn’t listen to today. I have scrapbooks I want to look at, but just can’t right now. I have another box of memorabilia to go through and I’ve procrastinated 3 weeks. I keep moving it around to different places in a feeble attempt to confront the task. It’s still there. I don’t like to do laundry on Sundays, but I did 4 loads. Everything but the facing the tiger of grief.
I lit a candle an hour ago next to a picture of my Dad and Ravi, my son. That’s a positive ritual. So is remembering the good. My Dad was at every swim meet (except maybe one because he was flying). He was at every awards banquet, everything. My friends loved his stories and even though I’d get embarrassed, I knew he was cool and loved them too.
My Dad planted the seed for my love of film. I was introduced to some of the greatest films of our time at a young age: The Deer Hunter, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, as well as his varied musical tastes from Stevie Wonder to Joan Baez, Count Basie to Eric Clapton. A Renaissance man before it became cool again. He wasn’t perfect, no parent is, as I’m sure my son will remind me when he’s 50. But he was my Dad. And today I honor him again.
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